E-Commerce.

Wearing smart, tailored business suits or sneakers and khakis may not fit the stereotype, but Jeffrey P. Bezos, Meg Whitman, and Jay Walker were 1990s-style revolutionaries. Each heads a company that radically transformed the way Americans and people around the world shop. Although on-line shopping represented only a small fraction of total consumer sales, that fraction did not exist as recently as 1995. As of 1999 the estimated revenue generated from e-commerce exceeded $184 billion. Yet, this figure constituted only 1 percent of the American economy, and online sales accounted for approximately .2 percent of total retail sales. These statistics produced a few skeptics. Stephen Roach, chief global economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, for instance, suspects that e-commerce is being "oversold." "I question if it'll ever be big," Roach admitted. Such doubts notwithstanding, a few years ago no one had heard of Bezos, Whitman, and Walker...